An Unexpected Haunting
by StarSpray
Summary: A pair of young Fallohides go hunting for hollyhock, and have an alarming encounter.


_Written for the 2019 Back to Middle-earth Month Bingo, for the prompts "Fallohide Hobbits" and "A Houseless Elf" on the Original Characters card, and "Hollyhock/Sore throat" on the Apothecary's Garden card._

_The names come from either the Anglo-Saxon or Ancient Scandinavian pages (I can't remember which, now) on behindthename dot com._

* * *

Ebba scrambled up a rocky ledge, and turned back to help her cousin as he struggled behind her. Poor Baggi had inherited their Harfoot grandmother's stature, and that made it difficult sometimes when they went out hunting in the hills. But he had the keenest eyes of any of the clan, and remembered everything he had ever been told about plants and roots and things. "Are you sure there's none growing any closer to home?" she asked once they had successfully made it up the ledge.

"Yes," he said, sitting down to catch his breath. "I looked all over yesterday." He took a drink of water before handing the skin to Ebba.

They sat for a few minutes, legs dangling over the edge. It was a nice day, warm but not too hot. The hills were alive with sounds of birds calling and animals rustling. Overhead Ebba glimpsed an eagle—one of the great big ones that lived high in the mountains. Everything was very green, and the sky was very blue. In the distance the river could be seen, glittering as it flowed merrily along southward.

"I heard Ma and Da talking last night," said Baggi after a little while. "About leaving."

The Harfoots were already moving. Dark things were coming out of the east, and it wasn't safe anymore by the river—or at least, not in the south. Ebba had heard something about the Stoors picking up and moving on as well, but of course rumors were never quite certain. "Heading west, like the Big Folk did ages and ages ago," Baggi went on. "And the Elves before them."

"There's plenty of Elves still in the woods away east," Ebba pointed out.

"Well, not those Elves, but other ones. I was talking to an elf the other day and he said it was kind of like hobbits, there being three clans that didn't quite live together, but were all friendly and got along, until some great Power came and convinced some of the Elves that they should go away west across the Sea, whatever that is, and there was a great big quarrel and in the end some elves went and others didn't."

"Which one was the one that you talked to?" Ebba asked, curious.

"I don't know. He didn't say. He did say that some of the elves as went came back again," Baggi added. "And that's when all the good stories happened. But there's no one about asking hobbits to go across the Sea. Just some of our folk as think that the Harfoots have the right of it, putting a great big wall of mountains between them and the dark things."

"What do your parents say?" Ebba asked.

"I don't know. They didn't sound like they knew themselves." Baggi sighed, and got to his feet again. "All right, the glade's just up this way."

It was only a few minutes more until they found the patch of hollyhock that Ebba's mother had sent them to find. There was a scratchy throat going around the clan, and she wanted the roots for medicines. Baggi left Ebba to harvest a great big bag full of roots, while he more carefully dug up a few plants to take back to plant in their garden, so they wouldn't have to make the trip up into the hills again. It was a pretty glade, sunlit and green and filled with stalks of pink and white and purple flowers.

As they worked, a cloud passed over the sun, throwing the wood into shade. Ebba at first paid it no mind—it was only a cloud, and they would beat any foul weather back home—but as she yanked up a stalk, a chill passed over the back of her neck, like someone had brushed cold fingers across it. She shivered, and sat back on her heels to look around. No one else was there, of course, except Baggi, who was humming to himself as he worked.

A breeze passed through the branches overhead, but it sounded more like mournful whispering. Ebba shivered again, feeling suddenly cold, in spite of the sun coming out from behind the cloud again. There were words in that whispering. Elvish words, it sounded like, though not ones she knew. "Baggi," she said, and discovered that her voice trembled a little, "are you ready to go back now?"

"Almost," he said. Then he looked up. "Ebba? What's wrong?"

"I don't know." She drew the string of her bag tight and hoisted it over her shoulder, careful not to dislodge her quiver. "There's something strange here. I don't like it."  
Baggi looked around, and then quickly finished tucking his plants into his own bag, which he held more carefully. They would have to figure out some clever way to get it down the rock ledges intact, but at the moment Ebba didn't care.

Unseen fingers drifted across her head, then, tickling her scalp and making her yelp. _Do not go, little ones,_ she thought she heard, the soft whispery voice moaning through the grass and the hollyhock flowers. _It has been so long…_

"Ebba." Baggi pointed behind her, and she turned to see, just for a moment, a figure seated among the flowers, with long hair falling across its face, blowing in a stronger wind than was blowing. Eyes glinted like dim stars, and there was something terribly, achingly sad about it. Ebba blinked, and the figure was gone, and there were only pale flowers again in the glade.

"Let's go," Ebba said, grabbing Baggi's hand and pulling him back into the wood. They ran as fast as they could without dislodging the flowers, and stopped only to tie a rope to Baggi's sack to lower it down the cliffs, after which they ran again, nearly tripping more than once on the steep slopes. By the time they reached home they were out of breath, and could hardly stay standing, trembling with the effort. They stopped outside Ebba's small house to catch their breath.

"Good thing you brought those back," Ebba said once she could speak without gasping. "I'm never going up _there_ again." Baggi nodded fervently.

.

A year later, Ebba helped Baggi tuck small packets of seeds, including hollyhock, into his bag as their clan prepared to set off into the west. There was a great kingdom of Men there, or so it was said, and inside its borders they could find a quiet spot of land to settle down with their Harfoot relations, and perhaps any Stoors that made it so far to join them, and they wouldn't have to worry about orcs or wraiths or strange elven spirits haunting forest glades.


End file.
